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I miss cooking
Written by Zhey | Posted on January 20, 2010 | No Comments
I miss cooking for my family. I haven’t done that in a while — actually haven’t since our move, save for the few times I tried to cook Filipino specialties which I sold at the store. Sadly though I did not take any pictures of any of those dishes but I hope to be able to do so soon, perhaps once we’re all good and settled in our home.
Yesterday I cooked traditional mac and cheese and it was a blast with Warren. I sprinkled it with a little Cayenne pepper so Tommy didn’t really appreciate that, he bailed out after two spoonfuls. Then for dinner I made some good old pancit palabok. Again, sorry I didn’t take any photos, everyone was already digging in when I thought about it.
Maybe next time. 
Y’think I’ll be a bento-meal makin’ momma?
Written by Zhey | Posted on September 8, 2009 | No Comments
I think I will be a bento-meal making mommy. No, not I think, I’m sure.
I recently went on a short trip to a Japanese store which is located inside a mall and found these leak-proof, scratch-proof, stain-proof and airtight bento boxes. Well, I just had to grab a blue one for Tommy, so it’s sitting there right now in my stash of goodies for when he comes home. I also got 2 sets of these cute, also leak-proof and stain-proof boxes, uhm maybe 3inches by 2 inches in scale (?), a set has three identical containers so I got six pieces all in all.
They’re cute, they will help keep me organized, they are practical and best of all, they are cheap! I got the 3 in 1 set for only P66.00 and their tag says they are Daiso products. I got the airtight blue one for P88.00, not bad!
Bento-meals are a big craze right now and there’s just too many bento-meal recipes being offered on the net, well, I still haven’t really decided on whether I would want to make it an everyday thing, but Warren and I thought it would be good to do it once in a while, like maybe on weekends, to keep mealtimes interesting for our son.
We’ll see…
Bought these interesting keepers at the Japanese Store inside Robinson’s Starmills
Bag-Bet
Written by Zhey | Posted on September 6, 2009 | No Comments
Buttered shrimp
Written by Zhey | Posted on September 1, 2009 | No Comments
I promised to share this simple shrimp recipe after the salad so here it is. Pardon the somewhat blurry pictures though, I was having a hard time with the light in my kitchen and my hands couldn’t quite hold the camera still, man that Canon D350 is heavy! I think I’ll be getting back to my Sony Cybershot soon.
Anyways, this recipe is very very easy and doesn’t need a lot of ingredients. You only need your shrimps of course, preferably deveined and shelled with the tails left intact, fat-free, salt-free butter, lots of garlic (lots! I used up one whole bulb), half of an onion head minced, salt and pepper to taste, dash of lemon or calamansi and olive oil.
You know what to do with all of those ingredients, don’t you? Yup, saute your shrimps in garlic and onion in olive oil and butter, season with salt and pepper and when the shrimps started turning pink in color, squeeze a dash of lemon or calamansi and voila! You now have a delicious, buttery, zesty seafood dish to serve along with your salad.
Wasabe on yummy fruity salad
Written by Zhey | Posted on August 28, 2009 | No Comments
Who would have thought that wasabe is so good on salad? Me didn’t. Until tonight, that is. If you’ve been with me a while, you already know that we like to experiment a lot around the kitchen. Remember that creamy chicken casserole? Or how about that spicy shrimp recipe that’s a bit like Szechuan? And of course, my infamous (at least in this household, heh) Spanish sardines pasta. Well, just like all of those mouth-watering and gastronomically stimulating dishes, tonight’s dinner is a merry mix of inventions with ultra-satisfyingly delectable results.
Warren was over the moon with my wasabe-laced salad and so was he with my garlic-infused and buttered shrimp (recipe coming right up). Is it just wasabe that gave that salad a wonderful kick? Na-ah. There’s a dash of curry powder in there, too! Yup, you probably can’t believe how curry powder and wasabe found their way to my salad, eh? Well, they just did. 
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Seafood Primavera
Written by Zhey | Posted on August 27, 2009 | No Comments
We featured pork dishes on our last two posts and I guess you are all screaming for something lighter already… Well, me too. Lol. So here is another quick and easy seafood dish that’s light and absolutely delish.
Ingredients:
Pasta – cooked according to package directions, set aside. I use the Del Monte brand because it’s affordable and high quality.
Seafood combinations – I used shelled shrimps and around thumb-sized squids, ink removed and sliced calamari style. You can also add in fish fillet, crab meat, oysters and mussels if you want.
1 tetra packed all purpose cream
1 small can of evaporated milk (you can ditch this if you don’t want the extra creamy flavor)
1 tbsp. butter
salt and pepper
about 3/4 cup seafood stock – again, you can ditch this, I just had to mix it in because I used the shrimp heads to make the stock and I wanted more shrimp flavor in the dish.
4 cloves minced garlic
1 head minced onion
1 tsp flour/cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbsps. water
olive oil
herbs and spices of your choice – basil, thyme, rosemary or oregano
Procedure:
In a pan, heat olive oil and saute garlic and onion. Drop the butter and then mix in seafood, one kind at a time, turning every once in a while to cook everything through. Pour in the cream, milk and shrimp stock. Season with salt, pepper and other herbs and spices of your choice. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for about three minutes. Did you use some stock? If you did, the sauce probably needs some thickening. This is where you use the cornstarch or flour mixture. Let the sauce simmer some more, maybe another three to five minutes.
Put your cooked pasta on a serving platter or dish and scoop generous amounts of the sauce on top. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Serve with toasted pesto bread on the side and enjoy!
Bopiz
Written by Zhey | Posted on August 18, 2009 | No Comments
Bopiz is originally a spicy Spanish dish adapted by Filipinos. Its main ingredients include pork lungs and heart sauteed in herbs and spices. Cooking time is around fifteen minutes so it can be categorized as a thirty minute dish, including prep time. Here’s how:
Ingredients:
1/2 kilo ground/minced/cubed pork lungs and heart
1 whole garlic head, crushed and minced
1 whole onion head, minced
1 red bell pepper, minced
pepper
chili slices (adjust according to taste)
atsuete /annato seed oil
2 tablespoons cooking oil
salt
*you can substitute salt for patis/fish sauce
Procedure:
Heat oil in a pan and saute garlic until you can smell its aroma then mix in the onions. After two minutes, mix the pork heart and lungs. Cook for about five minutes or just until the meat turns brown. Season with salt, pepper and the chili slices. Pour in the annato seed oil and bell pepper. Stir and let cook for around ten more minutes, adjusting the taste as you go along. Serve with plain steamed rice.
Hong Ma Recipe
Written by Zhey | Posted on August 14, 2009 | 1 Comment
Hong ma, or slow-cooked pork in Chinese, is one of the best Chinese dishes I have tasted so far. The fusion of flavors and textures is superb and I am even more amazed at how simple one could achieve that melt-in-your-mouth meat tenderness.
Today would be my second attempt at this mouth-watering dish. The first one was a flop in a sense that I didn’t really use the right ingredients because I didn’t have a clue what they were. I basically relied on instincts, trying with a degree of desperation, to recall and mimic the taste of that hong ma dish we ordered at Ongpin back in early 2008. I almost got it right, but the lack of enthusiasm on my Chinese husband’s reaction on his first bite was a bit discouraging.
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Seafood Curry
Written by Zhey | Posted on April 28, 2009 | 6 Comments
Seafood CurryIt was delicious and really perfect for rainy days. Because of the size of the shrimps, we decided to cook only 1/3 of the whole thing and kept the rest in the freezer which turned out to be good sized ones for grilled shrimps with lemon garlic butter sauce dip. But I digress, going back to the curry, it was perfect and we had no leftovers.
Ingredients:
Shrimps
Squid, de-veined, ink removed and sliced calamari style
cabbage, sliced
potatoes quartered
curry powder
cumin powder
desiccated coconut
garlic, onion
salt to taste
Procedure:
Saute garlic, onion, potatoes, shrimps and squid. Pour in desiccated coconut, curry and cumin powder. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for about three to five minutes minutes or until potatoes are tender. Season with salt and mix in cabbage. Cook for another two minutes or just until cabbage is cooked. Serve hot with plain steamed rice.
Chicken with lots of garlic!
Written by Zhey | Posted on April 14, 2009 | 4 Comments
You can never have too much garlic, right? I saw the original recipe for this dish at A Year of Crockpotting and sort of “salivated” over the thought of slowly cooked chicken in a bed of forty cloves of garlic rolling on my tongue. Yum!
Needless to say, I copied her recipe but added a few other ingredients for extra kick. What else did I put aside from the onions, garlic, pepper, paprika and teaspoon of olive oil? Herbs. Basil, Rosemary and Chili powder.
It. Was. Heaven!
I also made some mashed potatoes to go along with the chicken and as expected, the Hubby had a blast!
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